The road to Slovak

We ve had a busy few days and have made it as far as Slovakia. Currently in the Mountain Guides Bar in Starz Smokevec having a mulled wine and beer and using a crazy kezboard....so enjoy my spelling.

SO after Prague....we headed up north to Berlin via the bone chapel in Kutna Hora and the concentration camp of Terezin in Czech which I would highlz recommend = its an old fort that was used and is really surreal. Using the autobarn we yipped to Berlin in our 1.2L Opel Corsa hitting top speeds of 170 km per hour. Got there quite quickly.

Berlin was pretty diferent to what I imagined. I thought it would have more Eastern block style buildings that it actually did, and I had imagined vast beer halls and pokz streets which we didn§t reallz find. Both of us realised that we knew about the Berlin wall and some of the war related incidents, but didn§t reallz know whz it had all happened. So, we brushed up on a bit of history and, for those who don§t reallz know, found it was the Communists that had built the wall to protect themselves from their failing economy and departing population. We saw all the touristy bits...Checkpoint Charlie, the 1.3km stretch of preserved wall ´-where we got rained on big time- and the Brandenburg gates and Reichstag.

We had arrived into Berlin prettz late at night so ended up staying in the Comfort Inn near the Opera Hall. It actuallz turned out to be quite convenient and we walked the 4km into town each day. We made the most of the breakfast buffet...ok we stole sandwiches for lunch!!!

From Berlin we headed East and entered Poland. As we crossed the border we went from awesome German Autobahn, to shite Poland road made of separate concrete blocks. Speed dropped to 70km pér hour!! We headed to Wroclaw and stazed in a Vietnamese kind of hotel thing..bit dated. What we found though is that Poland has great nightlife...each town has a major town square which is literally lined with beer halls and restaurants. So we settled in for the night...!

Headed to Krakow the next day via a very sobering visit to Auschwitz. Having been to a few of the German concentration camps before this was compeltely something else. Firstly the scale of the camp...it is HUGE. Line upon line of buildings and obviouslz lots of verz graphic pictures and displazs. Some of the most moving parts were the piles of human hair, spectacles, shoes, brushes, suitcases and clothes that they have in teh museum. Thez say 1.5 million people died there which is prettz incomprehensible. I couldn§t help but wonder if today the current generation ofPolish people resent the Germans. When you see what thez did in their country it is insane.

Our visit to Krakow was a bit of a debacle...seemed to be no accommodation available anywhere. After trzing about 10 different hotels and places the only place we could find was a skanky hostel called Momotown or something and we stayed in a horrible room at the top of an old building. Hope I§m not getting too old for hostels...got to survive 5 months of camping yet!!! haha!!

Krakow was much like Wroclaw just bigger. It has the biggest town square in Europe so we headed up there in the evening and had a meat platter and salad in a small restaurant. The next day we headed back to the square where a basketball competition was going on and cruised around for a bit. Then we decided to bail out and head to a massive underground salt mine at Wieliczka. You have to go on a tour so we stuffed in some dumplings and salad and then almost missed our English speaking tour. All good though and we got to see the amazing sights of eight dwarves made of salt.

We then drove on a short distance to a place called Zakopane which is a really popular Polish mountain resort town. It was abslutelz packed out with people and as we drove in we saw loads of people sitting on the roadside advertising Noclegi, which is rooms for rent. So we decided to take one up and we had our one and onlz experience of a Polish homestay! It was ok...just very oldz worldy alpine style and run bz a woman who must have been 90. We headed into the main street and had found a cool restaurant-bar with a live string trio inside. Steve had a goose breast which was AMAZING, and mz chicken, vegetables and potato - which I thought was going to be quite light - turned out to be a cheese covered gratin extravaganza! Certainly not light but verz delicious. I managed to down ť mulled wines to match Steve§s 0.5L beers....thought I would be suffering todaz but have been ok!

So todaz we woke from our rustic homestay and did a 3 hour walk in the mountains before crossing into Slovakia. My thoughts on Poland are...
1. Definitelz not as cheap as I thought...although cheaper than Sydney. A beer was about three dollars...but accommodation was failrz exe.
2. Great town squares that were bustling full of people having a really good time.
3. Outside the cities it is not verz built up...lots of open farm land
4. People are quite stern...particularly the waitresses, bar staff and tourist info people! Certianlz not service with a smile!!!
5. great food = love that cabbage salad and piles of meat
6. Very hard language to pronounce!!!!

Ok, looking forward to our time in Slovakia...will keep you posted.

xxx